


the devil's children

by atlantisairlock



Category: A Simple Favor (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Fucked Up, Implied Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Murder, Twisted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-13 00:02:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16006049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlantisairlock/pseuds/atlantisairlock
Summary: Stephanie's more like Emily than either of them would care to admit.Dark!AU where Stephanie's characterisation isn't all over the place and she’s actually as manipulative, cruel, arrogant and ruthless as Emily is. The story unfolds very differently.





	the devil's children

**Author's Note:**

> i mean honestly after spending 90% of the movie building up to an ending where they both framed sean for murder & fraud then rode off into the sunset living happily & murderously ever after... i need my lesbians i felt so cheated 
> 
> title from 'the ballad of bonnie & clyde' by georgie fame.

Stephanie’s only seven years old the first time she’s ever responsible for a death. She has a pet hamster, a present from her father, which is cute and makes for good entertainment, especially the first week she has it. The novelty wears off pretty quickly, and four days after the last time she can remember feeding it, her mother finds the poor animal stone dead in its cage. 

Her parents sit her down and give her a firm talk about responsibility and discipline and treating animals kindly, but Stephanie buries the hamster in the backyard and all she feels as she places the tiny body in a hole in the ground is sheer fascination. She’s only seven, but it dawns on her clear as day - she is responsible for this creature’s death. _Directly_ responsible. She didn’t crush it underfoot or put a knife through it, but she still held power over its survival and chose to let it die. Something it will never, ever come back from. 

It is the first time in her young life she ever feels powerful.

It’s not the last.

 

 

She was a small baby, her father tells her, very much on the light side. It’s something that stays with her all her life - being a slip of a thing with wide eyes and a demure smile. She wears pretty dresses and giggles at things and gets very into makeup by middle school. People look at her and think _sweet, delicate, precious,_ or _weak, vain, shallow._ They never think _dangerous,_ and really, Stephanie thinks, that’s their own fault. 

She figures out pretty early on that this is a strength, that this is something she can quietly slip into her arsenal and use. She smiles and titters and preens her way into things and gets what she wants more often than she doesn’t. In freshman year a boy twice her size gropes her in her homeroom and then laughs in her face when she tells him to fuck off. Two weeks later he ends up in the hospital for septicaemia and no one even looks in her direction. Why would they? It’s _septicaemia,_ right? You can’t weaponise something like that, and even if you could, it wouldn’t happen - not in the hands of Stephanie Smothers. 

Of course not.

 

 

Stephanie’s mother loves her only daughter, but that doesn’t mean she ever _understands_ her, really. Up until the day she dies she bemoans Stephanie’s tendency towards sharp, cutting remarks spoken just whenever they would hurt the most, and her uncomfortably lighthearted dry uncaring wit, and the way she just doesn’t ever seem to truly care about anything. Stephanie tries to learn and adapt to the ideals that her mother wants her to emulate - it’s good to know how to play a part - but she’s been raised by this woman and she always gets seen through, eventually. It’s a big reason why she keeps working on it her entire life.

It’s not like that with her father, though. She never has to try and put up fronts with her father because he gets her, and accepts her, unconditionally. She’s deeply intelligent and calculating and observant, sly and ingenious and determined, and he respects those qualities in her, even admires them.

Three weeks before he dies, they’re sitting in his study together while she helps him on a project, and he speaks up, out of the blue, while they’re putting a dresser together for her mother. He tells her, in a quiet steady tone, not to listen to her mother. Not to change herself for anyone. 

“There are things in you that people view badly,” he says. “They think these things make you cruel.  And perhaps they do. But this world is a cruel one, and if you hold that in you, you’ll never be crushed beneath it.” 

He’s always seen her for who she is, and in that same vein, so has Stephanie. Her father is unassuming, perpetually flying beneath the radar, but holds power in every inch of his body, and so does she. She knows who she is, and what she wants, and she will grind the world down to powder to get it, sink her teeth in and never let go. 

 

 

The thing about her, really, is that up until Chris, she doesn’t want a lot of things. And that’s strength, in a sense - it would be hard to be so willing to fight and scrat and claw to get what she wanted, if she wanted every other thing she laid eyes on. She doesn’t overstretch herself and get greedy. She maintains her discipline and keeps herself content and takes hold of things within her reach, keeps them close and watches everyone else struggle endlessly only to lose miserably. 

She puts on a sweet girl-next-door facade all through high school, something that works well with the way she looks and dresses and carries herself. She works hard in school, keeps to herself, is friendly without truly getting too close to anybody else. She observes, catalogues, makes plans - and then her father dies, and Chris comes into her life, suddenly and unexpectedly, and some things shift. 

He’s a lot like her father, in that he understands her, almost instinctively. He sees from the very start that there’s a darkness in her that refuses to be quelled because she feeds it, she hones it, she worships it. He stands in awe of it and respects it, but doesn’t let it stop him from having conversations with her like a normal human being. It’s refreshing.

She wants him in her bed _long_ before the thought even so much as flits across his mind. She puts it there, really. She’s always been good at manipulating the way people see her - it’s not so much of a stretch of her abilities, to figure out how to manipulate the way they think. And she’s hot. She knows this, and uses it to her advantage. She’s conventionally attractive and can twist people around her finger and Chris is, at the end of the day, no match for her. She knows she has him in the bag the moment she decides she wants him. 

He thinks he starts it - he thinks he’s the one whose gaze starts to linger, and whose thoughts start to wander, and who goes in for the kiss first. And maybe he is. But she’s the one to direct that. She makes it happen. And when they fall into her bed that very first time, she knows she’s exactly where she wants herself to be. 

 

 

She starts dating Davis because he’s good cover. People don’t whisper about her and Chris, too well-bred and wary of neighbourhood politics to converse about something so scandalous, but sometimes glances and gazes linger, and she’s not stupid. She’s not about to let that get out of hand and drive her to the ground. 

Chris doesn’t like the idea, but even he grudgingly gets it after Stephanie explains her rationale. She pretends to run the options by him even though she’s already zeroed in on Davis, but Chris picks him anyway because he’s a predictable guy. Davis has a steady job, quite a bit of money, and isn’t terribly intelligent. He’s the best option, practically speaking. 

They get married two years after they start dating. Stephanie fucks Chris in the bathroom of the yacht where she holds her bachelorette party and says her vows the next day without a hint of guilt. And why would she? Everything is going according to plan.

 

 

Things go fine, for the longest time. Chris sticks around, ostensibly like a good half-brother should. Davis and Stephanie are known around the neighbourhood as just another lovely, normal couple, nothing outstanding about them whatsoever. Three months into their marriage Stephanie finds out she’s pregnant and everyone is happy, especially her mother, who is getting older and sicker and is desperately delighted that she’s going to have a grandchild. 

Miles is born in March, blotchy and screaming. Stephanie takes one look at him and falls in love beyond all comprehension. She’s loved people before - she may be cruel and merciless and all-around not too good a person but she’s not a complete monster. She loved her father, and she cares about her mother, and she wants Chris to stick around, but Miles is something different altogether. He’s her little boy, a tiny human being she’s entirely responsible for. 

For the first time in a long time, that familiar rush of power returns, twice as intense as she remembers it from when she was seven and burying a hamster in the garden. Back then she had life and death in her hands, and it was a wonder, a miracle, in its own right. Twenty years later she is holding another miracle in her arms - a whole new life, incubated inside her, and now brought out into the world. 

Chris tolerates Davis and keeps up the pretense because he believes the one Stephanie really loves is him. And Stephanie thought she did - love him, that is - but everything falls into place after Miles is born. He’s the catalyst, the being that allows her to finally understand what pure, unadulterated love is, the only thing allowed in that blindspot. She cares about Chris, mostly, but that feeling doesn’t extend to him, not that she really thinks it needs to. 

Miles becomes her life, everything else secondary, everything but for herself. And everyone else can say whatever the hell they want, but it’s a good life to lead.

 

 

Everything stays stable, uninteresting, routine, until the year Miles turns five. A week into the new year, Davis loses his job. It’s the first domino to fall in a very long line of them. He comes home from being sacked ranting and screaming and drunk out of his mind. Stephanie puts Miles in her room and locks Davis out of the house that night. 

Things get slowly and steadily worse from there. He stays home more often, gets into fistfights with everyone who even looks at him the wrong way, and goes through his store of alcohol like a speeding bullet. Chris starts getting aggressive in response, spends more time in their home on the pretext of making sure he never lays a hand on her or Miles. Davis gets unstable and Chris gets possessive and _Jesus,_ Stephanie really did not sign herself up for any of this shit. She’s losing control over the situation and it’s something she’s really not familiar or comfortable with. It’s not good for Miles, and she knows she needs to figure out a way to solve it.

Chris corners her one afternoon when Davis is dead drunk on the couch and Miles is napping in his bedroom. He tells her she needs to get a divorce and a restraining order, if necessary, and then the two of them can figure something out. He’ll stay with her, like he always has, and Miles is _his_ son after all, isn’t he? They’ll stay together, and be a real family, like they’ve always wanted.

Stephanie bites back the urge to say something deeply cutting about how he has no business telling her what she wants. Chris is an idiot and an untalented, jobless hack to boot. Things have been changing, over the years, and Christ, she’s not eighteen any more. 

Her half-brother was gorgeous, once, and understood her better than anyone else around her. He reminded her of her father, more than anything - the reason why she wanted him to begin with. He was brimming with potential, and she wanted him, even thought she might love him. It’s been almost ten years, though, since that first time they met, and he feels, more than ever, like dead weight. Davis might not be good for her, but neither is he. 

Familiarity breeds contempt, she thinks mournfully, recalling the days when Chris hadn’t yet learned to underestimate the darkness inside her, hadn’t thought growing up and settling down and having a child would make it fade away. She’ll have to remember this. 

“Stephanie, are you listening?” Chris demands, face red and eyes wild. “You need to drop him. You need him out of here as soon as you possibly can.” 

Stephanie meets his eyes and thinks idly about holding death in the palm of her hand. “Don’t worry,” she says, the bare bones of a plan stirring in her mind. “I’ll figure something out.” 

 

 

She congratulates herself on being a real planner, because she and Davis took out life insurance policies on each other when she got pregnant so the timing won’t even look suspicious. Chris barely has a dime to his name, so there’s no real contention there, but aside from her he doesn’t have any family left so what meagre assets he has will come to her anyway. 

She’ll move, Stephanie muses. It’ll be perfectly understandable - grief, the neighbours will say, when she sells the house and calls a moving service and takes off wherever she wants. She’ll be in full control of her finances and she’ll raise Miles on her own the way she _knows_ she can.

She crafts her plan and she knows it will work. It’s just a matter of timing, and of a casual statement dropped here, a little nudge there. Feeding Davis’ incandescent rage, Chris’ increasingly paranoid jealousy and possessiveness. Of plying Davis with more alcohol than his stash should hold. Of getting both of them into a car, together. 

Of cutting the brakes.

She watches them drive off and then spends the next three hours doing chores, cooking dinner, playing with Miles. When the doorbell rings and she opens the door to the police, the way her legs give way beneath her and the tears start coming is almost natural. She’s spent weeks schooling herself for it, after all. And if there’s one thing she knows how to do, it’s put up a very, very good act. 

 

 

After she settles everything - the funeral, where the whole neighbourhood comes to give their condolences and Stephanie plays the part of bereaved sister and wife for two days; settling the wills and insurance payouts; packing up and selling the house - she takes Miles and books it to Connecticut, where she settles down in a perfectly average house looking like a perfectly average suburban mother with no hidden secrets whatsoever. 

She enrolls Miles in kindergarten and starts looking into the nearby schools. She gets to know her neighbours, attends backyard barbecues, and chats with other parents when she picks Miles up every afternoon. She makes some money selling crafts and baked goods, useful skills she’s picked up over the years, and spends what was Davis’ and Chris’ money carefully and intelligently. 

Everything settles down, once again, into a routine Stephanie became used to after Miles was born. Stability, control, and peace. No unpleasant surprises, nobody trying to work their way into her space and screw things up. She lets herself fall into her role - Stephanie Smothers, single mother, enthusiastic, earnest, a little awkward, devoted to her son, always ready with a smile. No one ever looks past it, and why would they? 

Her act is flawless and it’s easy to keep it up. She lives it until it practically becomes her life - the key being, though, that she never forgets who she _really_ is. Just because she hides it well doesn’t mean the darkness doesn’t still simmer under her skin, just waiting to come to the surface when it’s called. Some things haven’t changed - she’s still willing to burn the world to ashes to get what she wants, only that all she wants in the moment is to make sure Miles has the safe, secure life he deserves. Everything else is secondary, and so this is the life she chooses, and she feels absolutely no regret. 

 

 

When Miles turns seven he goes to Warfield Elementary. Most of the kids follow up there, too, so Stephanie mixes mostly with the same group of parents and sees familiar faces when she picks Miles up from school every day. She recognises the children too, and they know her as Ms Stephanie. 

Well, most of them. Miles gets a new classmates she doesn’t recognise - his name is Nicky, and he becomes fast friends with Miles almost immediately. Every time she comes to get Miles, now, he’s with Nicky, talking or playing or messing around the way seven-year-old boys do. 

She never sees Nicky’s parents, and it makes her start to wonder. 

 

 

“Oh, Nicky Townsend,” Stacy says dismissively, when Stephanie eventually asks. “Yeah, his parents are a piece of work. His dad’s not too bad - name’s Sean, comes to get him from school most days, never on time but you can tell he loves his son. Fine piece of ass, too.”

Stephanie gives her a look that Stacy doesn’t acknowledge. “His mom, that’s another story. Emily never gets involved in anything school-related whatsoever. Apparently she’s some high-flying exec in a fashion company and rakes in the big bucks. Big shot, you know the type, no time for her kid or her husband. And an absolute bitch.”

Stephanie, who has spent almost thirty years of her life hearing people whisper about how _she’s_ a heartless bitch behind her back, feels an instant connection with and interest in this Emily person. She won’t say she understands or approves of her apparent disinterest in Nicky’s academic progress, but she certainly sounds like someone Stephanie would understand. A woman with a hunger for power, for control, and with the strength to grab onto such things and not let go. To take everything the world might throw at her and mold it in accordance to her own desires. 

“Does she _never_ come to Warfield?” Stephanie asks, putting an edge of curiosity into it. Stacy snorts. “Honey, you’ll have more luck making pigs fly.” 

She chuckles back, a bit off the beat, for Stacy’s benefit, but the cogs in her mind turn.

 

 

For the next year, Emily Nelson is a ghost. 

Nicky talks about his mom, sometimes, when Stephanie’s picking Miles up and saying hello. Occasionally she runs late and catches a glimpse of Sean Townsend bundling Nicky into his car and driving off. The kids do a crafts project in class and Stephanie sees it when she comes to get Miles - there are family photos strung up all over the classroom, and her glance falls on Nicky’s, with his parents. Even in that one, it’s a little blurry, Emily’s face just a bit out of focus. Stephanie sees blonde hair and a cool smile and not much else. 

And it’s weird, but her interest just grows and grows. She likes a challenge, a mystery. Her life is stable but not _exciting,_ and she thinks the last time she truly felt alive was when she was plotting how to make two deaths look like an accident. It’s not that she isn’t content, but this has fallen into her lap, and she’s not about to just let it slide away. 

 

 

And then, one rainy afternoon, a year later, she’s on the school porch telling Nicky they can’t do a playdate if his parents aren’t there to agree, and then he says _my mom’s here!_

He points behind her, and Stephanie turns slowly to see someone get out of a familiar car - Sean’s car. She’s in a pantsuit that probably costs more than Stephanie’s entire wardrobe, cane in hand, and when she looks up Stephanie swears she’s seeing God. If this is the infamous Emily Nelson, she is without exaggeration the most beautiful woman Stephanie has ever seen in her life. 

They lock gazes, from across the porch, and Stephanie feels like she’s suddenly eighteen again, greedy and grasping and hungering for something that makes her gut curl. Emily walks over and she’s sharp, cutting, dismissive - it’s nothing like Chris ever was, but she doesn’t need to be. She gives Stephanie a smile, this small thing, cold and masking deep cruelty, something Stephanie recognises from the mirror. 

“You drink?” Emily asks, flicking her gaze from Nicky and Miles back to Stephanie. She’s still got the ‘normal suburban mom’ mask on, so she responds a little hesitantly, voice high and stumbling, but the end result of that brings her to Emily’s gorgeous house so really, when it all comes out in the wash, it’s a success. 

 

 

They talk - Emily from behind the kitchen counter, mixing martinis; Stephanie from where she’s perched on a chair, watching her. Emily has a way of doing the exact opposite of what society calls ‘putting people at ease’. Stephanie feels watched, a little hunted - a slide under the microscope. It’s an intriguing feeling, roles reversed from what she’s used to. 

But Emily is fascinating - twistedly, terribly so. Stephanie feels drawn, like a moth to a flame, and she thinks it might be like this for everyone else. They’re repulsed, she knows, but only because Emily is so magnetic that keeping away would be the only option to stay whole. Like a tiger in a cage, she thinks. Come too close, and she’ll tear you apart. 

Stephanie Smothers, however, is not ‘everyone else’. 

“You know, I can’t believe you agreed to come over,” Emily says, later, when Sean’s about to start dinner and she’s seeing Stephanie out. “The other parents thought I would eat you up.” 

There’s a glint in Emily’s eyes, like a challenge. Stephanie takes a leap of faith and lets her carefully-constructed front slip, just the slightest, smiling with all her teeth. “I’m not very good at listening to what other people think.”

For one brief, glorious second, Stephanie sees something flicker in Emily’s eyes. Something akin to shock, her idea of who Stephanie is abruptly shifting, recalibrating. Stephanie hasn’t shown her claws, not really, but she’s let their edges catch the light, and Emily certainly isn’t blind. 

Silence, for a few seconds, before a smile stretches across Emily’s face, more genuine than anything she’s said in the past few hours. Stephanie sees something new in her expression now - some measure of respect, regard, and perhaps recognition of a kindred spirit. “I think, Stephanie Smothers,” she says, rolling the words off her tongue. “We should arrange another playdate.”

 

 

The next time she comes over, they sit on the couch with martinis, once again. Emily passes her an ice-cold glass filled with frozen gin and touches the rim of her glass to Stephanie’s. It’s very, very good. Stephanie expected nothing less.

They share secrets - confessions, really. The most lurid, scandalous, taboo thing they’ve ever done. Emily goes first, talking about her threesome with Sean and his TA. His young, pretty TA with long hair and dark eyes, who Emily fucked until she cried. 

“Girls look so pretty when they come,” she says. Her voice is low, husky, full of intention, thumb tracing the edge of her glass. Stephanie knows she could lean over right now and knock it out of her hand and they could fuck each other’s brains out on this couch, and _god,_ that would be ideal, but -

But the anticipation is the fun in wanting, sometimes. Now, more than ever. She wants this, and she knows she can have it if she just reaches out to take it. It’s easy, and she’s bored of easy. Stringing it out, playing games - that’s so much more fun. And because Emily is _Emily,_ Stephanie knows she’d rather have the chase for a little while longer, too. 

Instead, she sips from her drink, tips her head back. “The most scandalous thing I’ve ever done,” she says musingly. “When I was eighteen, my father died.” 

“That’s not scandalous at all,” Emily says flatly. “Although I’m intrigued by the fact that all the men in your life seem to have come to untimely ends.” 

Stephanie continues on, ignoring the barb. “We were setting up for the funeral, with all the family around, and out of nowhere, this boy walked in. About my age, and looking exactly like my father if he’d been thirty years younger. Acting just like him too, at least for a while.” 

Emily starts to sit up, the interest and amusement sparkling in her eyes. She knows where this is going, and Stephanie immerses herself in the telling. “Turned out I had a half-brother nobody knew about except my mother. He stayed for the funeral… and then just never left.” She pauses, letting it sit. “My father was the only person in the world who ever really understood me. Chris was a lot like him, and handsome, and at that point, it looked like he was going to be in my life for good.”

“You fucked him,” Emily breathes, completing the story for her. She gives Stephanie a playful shove, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “You fucked your brother?” 

Stephanie smiles back, finishing the rest of her drink. “Yeah. You gonna make a big deal about it?”

“You’re one nasty fucking bitch, you brother-fucker,” Emily says, but there’s no venom in it. Instead she reaches for the cocktail shaker to pour Stephanie another drink. “So where the fuck is he now?”

“Died a couple years ago,” Stephanie shrugs, to Emily’s pointed look. “Don’t tell me you killed him.”

Stephanie just laughs, holding out her glass. “Another.”

 

 

The visits become more frequent - always to Emily’s home, never Stephanie’s. She meets Sean a couple of times, plays with Nicky, but the bulk of the time is spent with Emily in the living room after shooing Miles into Nicky’s room for his playdates. 

They never talk about anything _too_ dark. They skirt around themes and topics, close but just not close enough. It’s more like a game than ever - seeing how far they can push, how much they can imply without truly giving anything away. Stephanie hints at the accident, at being responsible for it. In turn, Emily mentions a father and a violent death. An accident, too. Of course. No specifics. Emily doesn’t give them and Stephanie doesn’t ask. That’s not how they’re playing the game. 

She talks about her father, at some point. That’s probably the only subject in the world that can make her tear up, although she still feels like an idiot when she does it. Vision blurry and eyes smarting on Emily’s couch, she barely sees Emily lean in. Her hands come to rest on either side of Stephanie’s face, her mouth pressed against Stephanie’s own. She tastes like gin, the scent of her perfume wreathed around them, and she kisses like a dream. 

It doesn’t get any further than that - their sons are just a floor above them, Sean due home in an hour, and where’s the fun in it if Stephanie just gives it up the first time - but it’s electric, and she knows that it changes something, implicitly. When Emily pulls back there’s something different in the air. A good different. A promise that it will happen again, and maybe, a promise of more.

 

 

Three days later, Emily calls her and asks for a simple favor. Asks her to pick Nicky up, have him over, and that she’ll see Stephanie later. 

Thirty-six hours later, she still isn’t back. 

And with that, just one simple favor, the game changes.

 

 

She gets Sean on board, first, because… duh. He’s her husband, and he’s Nicky’s father, which means that if he flies home from London at least Nicky will have one parent with him. He sits in her kitchen and she updates him on everything she knows and at two in the morning, Sean decides they’ll call the police. 

She’s really not surprised when they don’t take it seriously, especially after Sean mentions that _yes,_ she has a history of leaving everything and running off without telling a soul where she’s going and then coming back five days later like absolutely nothing happened. They insinuate Emily might have been having an affair, and then swivel the suspicion over to Sean. 

They don’t even glance at Stephanie, which is all well and good because she really has no fucking clue in hell where Emily is, but her mind is already working furiously. She’s spent a month, now, coming over every other afternoon and talking with Emily on the couch. Emily is secretive and a good liar but also incredibly intelligent and more like Stephanie than either of them could have ever predicted. 

Something doesn’t add up. Something is wrong.

 

 

She investigates, on her own - the cops are useless, she knows this, considering she got away scot-free with a murder not five years ago. She maneuvers her way into Dennis Nylon’s headquarters, sneaks into Emily’s office, picks up an interesting document - a simple piece of paper with a black-and-white photo of Emily and the words _GOTTA HAVE FAITH_ scrawled beneath them - and pretty much bullies her way out to safety. With Sean and Detective Summerville’s help, she figures out the Miami lead is a ruse, and that she’s in a white Kia driving to - where?

A member of the public comes in with a lead. Says she thought she saw Emily in a gas station in Michigan. The local police get notified, and people keep a lookout. Two days later a white Kia is found in a lake, and when they drag it, they find a body - familiar tattoo on the wrist, familiar ring on the finger. The DNA is a match. They have their girl, and she’s dead. 

Stephanie stands before the grave during the funeral and thinks _no._

_Something doesn’t add up. Something is wrong._

 

 

Less than a week after Emily’s ‘death’ - she’s still very, very up in the air about whether she believes that - Sean puts his arms around her in his pantry and kisses her. 

God, men are trash. 

She kisses him back, because 1) he’s hot and she is _starved_ for a good fuck, 2) if Emily is really dead, it’s not going to be a big deal, and more than anything, 3) he’s the closest she’s going to get right now to her. There’s even the faintest trace of her perfume on his skin when he starts getting their clothes off. When he moves between her legs she tangles her fingers in his hair and imagines it longer, blonder, blue eyes looking up at her instead of brown. 

When she comes she doesn’t think _Sean,_ or even just _Emily._ She thinks about one kiss shared on a couch over martinis and thinks _shit, if she’s really dead, it’s a crying shame we never got to fuck._

 

 

And then, of course, she isn’t. 

In the first place she already thought the whole situation was suspicious as hell and didn’t add up. She’s only known Emily about a month, but it’s easy to tell she’s incredibly smart and a very, very good planner. And the heroin? Stephanie would know if she was a user - the first time Davis snorted a line of coke she saw it when she got home six hours later. She’s not an idiot. 

Especially when Detective Summerville comes to her doorstep and lets himself in and tells her, in no uncertain terms, that Sean took out a life insurance policy on Emily two weeks before her death. The payout is four million dollars and the likelihood of it going through is almost a hundred percent. 

Four million is a lot of money for a woman who told her over martinis that they were coming pretty fucking close to bankruptcy within the next two years. Four million is a lot of money, period. And if anyone knows about life insurance policies, it’s Stephanie. 

The coffin in the nail comes when she’s at the dinner table with Sean, Nicky and Miles. Nicky says _I saw my mom,_ and Sean tells him a bunch of shit about grief and coping mechanisms, but Stephanie’s gaze sharpens and narrows onto him. 

“She told me to say hi to Stephanie,” he says, and there is _so_ much more in that than either Sean or Nicky could understand. It’s not a greeting, and maybe in another world it might have been a threat, or even a challenge, but Stephanie knows exactly what this is really supposed to be - an invitation. 

She was suspicious, before. Wondering, guessing, probing. 

Now - _now?_ She’s sure. 

“It’s grief,” Sean says. “He’s projecting. He’s trying to cope.” 

“Of course it is,” Stephanie soothes, quite used to listening to men explain to her things that they don’t know the least about. “Give him time.” 

She tucks Nicky in, kisses Miles goodnight, shrugs Sean off when he makes his advances, and then sits in front of her laptop and gets to work. 

 

 

She doesn’t exactly have a lot of clues, a lot of leads. She has no idea, really, where Emily could be. But she has an invitation, and she is intent on answering it. She just needs some time. 

She starts with the painting. She finds Diana and with her, a ratty old shirt with a damning phrase on the back. She looks up the bible camp and sits in a basement paging through old yearbooks. She remembers the paper she found in Emily’s office - _GOTTA HAVE FAITH_ \- and starts putting pieces together. 

Her next step is to contact the McLandens, only Emily sends her a letter before she can pick up the phone and start calling. When she breaks the seal on the envelope, a photo falls out. It’s an old one of her and a couple of childhood friends and her brother is circled in red marker. Scrawled at the bottom of the photo - BROTHER FUCKER. 

She turns it around and the text is smaller, neater, faded. Almost invisible to the eye. 

_Come and find me, you nasty fucking bitch._

Stephanie reaches for the envelope and studies the postmark carefully, then goes for her phone and rents a car. 

 

 

“Where are you going, Mom?” Miles asks, the morning she’s due to set out. “Why can’t I come with you?”

“I’m going on a treasure hunt, buddy,” she replies, ruffling his hair. “I’m looking for something. It might take a while, and I don’t want you to miss school, so you’ll be staying with Uncle Sean and Nicky for a while until I get back. And I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?” Damn, it hurts a little to leave Miles behind, but there’s no way she can bring him along for this. 

She loves him, more than her own life. That still hasn’t changed. She killed two men for the sake of her son and she would do it again in a heartbeat. Miles is still the most important thing in her entire world. 

It’s just that she can feel her orbit shifting in favour of Emily, too. She wants Miles, and she wants Emily, and she’s _Stephanie Smothers,_ holding life and death in her hand. She’s not going to give one of them up for the other when she knows she can have both. She needs to do this. She needs to figure it out. 

Miles’ eyes are wide as he looks up at her. “Mom? Is Uncle Sean going to be my new dad?”

Stephanie doesn’t grimace, but it’s a very near thing. She pats Miles on the cheek and pulls him into a hug. “He’s just a friend, alright? The only dude I need in my life is you.” 

He hugs her back. “Come back soon, Mom.” 

“I will, honey,” she says, and means it.

 

 

The first motel she pulls up to isn’t the right one, and neither is the second. Or third. Or seventh. 

But she knocks on Door 20 at the eleventh, and she’s greeted by blonde hair, blue eyes, a vicious little smirk. “Took you long enough.” 

Warmth buoys up in Stephanie’s chest, unbidden. Emily is a liar, remorseless, supremely cruel, but she is also the only person in her entire life who has even come close to being - well, like Stephanie herself. Her father might have understood and respected her, as did Chris, once, and Miles might love her without reserve because she’s his mother, but Emily, for lack of a better way to phrase it, gets her. Emily sees the darkness in her and never shuns it or tries to fill her with light. Emily embraces it, and consumes it, and matches it with her own. 

Stephanie thinks this is what it might be to be in love. Nothing tops the way she felt when she looked at Miles for the first time, but this is different. This scorches the earth, the heat crawling up her spine. She wanted Chris, back when, and it was always about that - wanting him for herself. Here and now, she wants Emily to want her back. 

“I’ve spent a couple hundred bucks to get here,” she says, casual. “Sure could use another four million.”

Emily’s still laughing when she tugs Stephanie into the room and closes the door behind them. 

 

 

She points Stephanie to the bed and goes for the gin. “I’m not going to tell you why I’m here.”

“Bullshit,” Stephanie replies, making herself comfortable. “You wouldn’t have sent me that letter otherwise.”

“Maybe I sent you that letter to trap you,” Emily says conversationally, misting her glass. “Maybe I’m going to pull out a gun and shoot you in the head.” 

“Wrong.” Stephanie reaches inside her bag and flicks the safety off her pistol, loud enough for Emily to hear. “I’m not stupid, Emily. It’s more than just the four million. If you really wanted that money, you could find another way to get it. An easier way, one that wouldn't take you away from Nicky.”

Emily cocks her head, unfazed by the gun. “What makes you think I care that much about Nicky? What makes you think I'm not going to just get that money and run for the hills and disappear?"

Her voice is far too smooth and casual, betraying her. Stephanie rolls her eyes. "You went to see him. You really don't think I'm that stupid, do you, Emily? I have a son, too. I know." 

Emily doesn't deny the implication that they're alike, that there is more of her mirrored in Stephanie than she would ever verbally admit. She hands Stephanie a brimming glass, holds on to her own. Sits on the bed beside her and looks her in the eye. And because Stephanie is Stephanie, and she knows what she’s doing - she tells the truth. Emily weaves her story about a twin sister, an abusive father, arson, running away, crafting a new identity. She talks about receiving a letter and driving down to Michigan and holding her sister down in a lake until her lungs filled and her heart stopped beating.

It fits in with the narrative she was figuring out. All of it. Hope and Faith McLanden, in the yearbook she found. The lake at the camp. There was a Margaret McLanden on the list of McLandens she was going to try. Stephanie’s pretty damn certain, now, that if she’d called and asked about Faith and Hope McLanden, she would have struck gold. She’s a damn good detective.

“You believe me,” Emily says curiously, when she’s done. “Why?”

 _Because I’m not a fucking idiot and I’ve actually been accumulating quite a lot of incriminating evidence,_ Stephanie almost says. _Because I know what a murderer looks like. Because I know what it means to steamroll over everything in your path in order to get what you want. Because I know what power looks like. Because if I had been standing in your shoes, I would have done the same. Because I_ have _done the same, before._

“Your eyes look different when you tell the truth,” Stephanie replies, instead. 

“Bull _shit,_ Smothers,” Emily says, her laughter real and warm and deep. 

 

 

“By the way,” Stephanie says, a couple more martinis later, sprawled on the motel bed and staring up at the ceiling. “I fucked him. Sean, I mean. I would say sorry, but I’m really not.”

Emily snorts into what might be her fifth glass. “Was he a good lay?”

Stephanie shrugs, looking over at her. “I don’t know. I was thinking of you, really, when I was in his bed. Not him.”

There’s a long moment of strangely comfortable silence. Emily slowly sips the rest of her martini, places the glass carefully on the nightstand, then turns so she can lean down over Stephanie, so close their lips are almost touching. “You’re a moron, brother-fucker,” she says, with less heat in it than this tenderness and awe and almost _fondness._ Stephanie thinks it might be the closest Emily’s ever gotten to love. It’s good enough for her.

“Yeah,” she accedes. “I’m the brother-fucking moron who realised you were alive while your husband was still banging on about grief and coping mechanisms. I’m the one who currently has a folder of material in her laptop that was coming together to give me the whole story. I could blow apart your pretty little insurance fraud scheme, but instead I drove a hundred fucking miles to lie on this shitty motel bed and be your accessory to murder.” 

Emily rolls her eyes. “You’re not going to turn me in. You didn’t come here to report me to the cops, Stephanie. I’m not an idiot.” She stares straight into Stephanie’s eyes, searching, prying. “What is it you want?”

“You’re not an idiot,” Stephanie agrees, looking back, unflinching. “What do I want?”

With a soft laugh, Emily swings one leg over to straddle her hips, presses the length of her body against Stephanie’s and kisses her, rough and insistent and so undeniably herself. Stephanie curls her fingers against Emily’s neck and kisses her back.

 

 

After, they sit down to really talk about where the plan is going. The money is going to come in soon, Stephanie tells her - she hasn’t been sticking around with Sean for nothing, and he’s easy as hell to manipulate and use. Nobody suspects a thing. As far as the world is concerned, Emily Nelson is six feet under in a lovely cemetery in Connecticut. 

“We put that four million into a Swiss account,” Emily says. “When the time is right, you drop some conveniently incriminating files on his computer. He goes to jail, we take our sons, and we disappear into the night.” 

“If you run off without me, I’ll hunt you down and kill you,” Stephanie replies flatly. 

Emily laughs, giving her a swift roll of her eyes. She leans across the bed, kissing her again - Stephanie doesn’t think she’ll ever get tired of that. “I would _never_ dare to fuck with a murderer.” 

“Liar,” Stephanie replies, kissing her back, all teeth and tongue. She digs her fingers into Emily’s hips and pushes them so close there’s no breathing space, and lets herself get drunk on it. On holding life and death in her hands, and getting to make that choice. 

“Look at you, brother-fucker,” Emily breathes, working at the buttons of her top, leaning down to suck a bruise against her throat. “Looking like a fucking goddess.” 

Stephanie tips her head back, laughs low, tangles her fingers in long blonde hair, and feels like God.


End file.
